


drink your fill of love

by annejumps



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, First Time, M/M, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 19:24:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13864389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annejumps/pseuds/annejumps
Summary: One morning when Erik’s thirty-two, he feels an itch in his arm, and looks down to see, an inch or so away from his scar, a fresh new soulmark in a different shape. He stares at it, wordless, reeling.





	drink your fill of love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl) in the [xmenrarepairs18](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs18) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Soulmate AU

Erik has had Charles’ soulmark on his arm since he was two years old. 

He doesn’t remember much from being a toddler, but he does remember the itching as it started to rise: a raised bump on his skin, in a particular shape, half an inch across. His mother explained that his soulmate had been born, his _bashert_ , and that he’d find the person with the matching mark through the registry, when he or she was of age.

He’s having it removed.

Of course, removing it is only a symbolic gesture. Nothing can erase or hide the fact that Charles was his soulmate from the moment Charles was born. But Erik no longer deserves to see his mark there, proud and raised. Not when Charles turned away from him in his hospital room, looking out the window, voice clear when he told Erik, “I don’t want to see you.”

He’d had ten years with Charles: the most intense, passionate ones he could have imagined. From their time as callow youths, when Charles had been eighteen and Erik twenty and he’d received the notice that his match was of age. He’d flown from Germany to New York City and met him in the registry office; they went immediately together to a restaurant, and slept together that very night. They were both mutants: Charles was a telepath, and Erik was metallokinetic. That as much as anything strengthened their bond. Erik couldn’t imagine being matched with anyone who wasn’t a mutant.

Ten years of love, anger, laughter, fighting, until Erik had caused a confrontation on the street with anti-mutant bigots, and in the subsequent melee had provoked and failed to divert a bullet that had cut into Charles’ spine. 

The surgery hurts, cutting out a little chunk of his skin. It takes a while to heal; he notices its absence every day, where he’d once smiled at it, where Charles had once kissed him, fond and possessive. Part of him cries out at its being gone, telling him he’s made a mistake that can never be rectified; but he knows he doesn’t deserve Charles’ mark on his body. So he’d had no choice. 

He doesn’t tell Charles he’s excised it; he doesn’t tell Charles anything. Charles had said he didn’t want to see Erik, so Erik doesn’t go to see him, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how much it hurts to want him and not have him. He reminds himself he deserves the pain. “You did this,” Charles had told him, broken on the asphalt, no longer able to feel his legs. 

One morning when he’s thirty-two, he feels an itch in his arm, and looks down to see, an inch or so away from his scar, a fresh new soulmark in a different shape. He stares at it, wordless, reeling.

He’s heard of this happening before; it’s possible for someone to have more than one soulmate. It’s usually the case that one’s soulmates are close to one’s own age, but in his case, it seems he’s got ones for different stages of his life. Rare, but not unheard of. He wonders if his soul has changed so much since he was two. If he no longer really matches with Charles anyway. 

But this would mean his soulmate is thirty-two years his junior. He’ll be a shocking fifty years old when he or she comes of age. It hardly seems imaginable. But he must wait.

Erik falls in love with a spirited Polish woman named Magda, on one of his vacations in Eastern Europe; with the understanding that they are not each other’s soulmates (hers died several years ago, leaving her with a young daughter), they eventually get married, and spend a languorous, sex-filled and enjoyable decade together. Until she decides the relationship has run its course, and after the divorce departs amicably for the town where she was born, fourteen-year-old daughter in tow. 

Erik returns to New York City, despite his memories of the time he’d spent there with Charles. He still has eight years until his soulmate is of age. He wonders if his new soulmate is male or female, if they have any opinion on having had a soulmark from birth, knowing that their mate was already born. He wonders what they would say if they knew he was three decades older.

He dates, but casually. He travels, visiting his mother in Germany; he works, and he keeps up with various mutant and Jewish advocacy groups. And he keeps up with Charles’ doings, to an extent—he’s still in New York State, and there’s something about him starting a school. Erik doesn’t look too closely.

Erik is fifty and awaiting the notice indicating his soulmate is now of age. He has ongoing habits of eating healthily, exercising regularly, and sleeping well. In addition to simply wanting to be healthy, he wants to keep himself in good shape for his much younger soulmate. He can’t help wondering if they’ll have sex, or be platonic; if they have sex, he wants to be up for it, and either way he’d like to be alive for as long as possible. Luckily, mutants age more slowly than baseline humans, and he knows he doesn’t look his age, but still.

He wonders, too, whether his soulmate will also be a mutant. It only seems right. Charles is one, a very powerful one, and Erik feels that only a fellow mutant could truly understand him, the more powerful the better. It’s ironic, he knows, that it was a fight over anti-mutant bigotry that had separated him from Charles forever. His passion for protecting other mutants is undiminished, even if he failed utterly when it came to Charles, who most likely still doesn’t understand his point of view.

The notice arrives in the mail, and Erik goes to the appropriate government office downtown at the assigned time, dressed well (although he always dresses well) but not too formally. He knows he’s causing metal objects nearby to vibrate slightly with his nerves, but it’s hard to help doing so. 

In the room he’s ushered into, there’s a girl waiting, with pale skin and long, fiery red hair. She’s beautiful, poised, but he can tell that under everything she’s terrified. She, too, is making objects in the room shake and rattle, but it’s everything, not just metal. The agent assigned to them looks harassed, nervous. There are strong emotions pouring off the girl; Erik recognizes the feeling in the air that he’d experienced when Charles was in poor control of his abilities, stressed or angered. She’s telepathic, then, as well as telekinetic.

Erik realizes this all in a few seconds, the time it takes for her to look up, shaking, mouth open. She’s been terrified of this meeting, afraid now because her soulmate is an old man, a stranger. Erik can understand even someone with powers like hers being frightened. She doesn’t seem to have been well trained in her abilities; either she doesn’t have access to proper teaching, or they’re so strong she simply isn’t mature enough to handle them. 

Their eyes meet, and she stills. “There’s no need to be afraid,” he tells her, and with all his effort (with practice from dealing with Charles) he thinks at her to check his mind if she doesn’t believe his words. _I’m a mutant, like you_. Even if the core of her fear isn’t really about whether he’s a mutant or not, it can’t hurt to start from that.

He feels her rummaging in his mind; she’s clumsy at it, but he thinks she might even be more powerful than Charles, just unable to wield such a colossal ability properly yet. Seemingly satisfied, she closes her eyes for a moment, releasing a breath, and he sits down next to her, after approaching cautiously. Wordless, he shows her the mark on his arm, and after a beat, she shows him hers. They match, of course, but seeing it makes it real. She says nothing about the scar.

Her name is Jean. After a short interview with the agent and some signing of papers, they’re released to leave, and they get a taxi after agreeing to go on to a coffee shop to talk. Erik is already feeling better, soothed in the presence of his new soulmate, although the renewed feeling reminds him of how it was with Charles, and it hurts all over again.

“Your scar,” Jean says, breaking the silence in the back seat. “You had another soulmate. Before… before me.” She had to have seen Charles in his mind.

“Yes,” Erik says simply. “I loved him.”

“You still love him,” she says. 

“I do,” Erik says. 

“You cut his mark out.”

“Yes. I….” He finds he can’t make himself say out loud that he felt he didn’t deserve Charles’ mark on his arm. Instead, he swallows.

She takes up his hand from the expanse of leather between them, and touches first the scar remaining from Charles’ mark, moving next to touch her own. He feels a tingling.

“I was so scared,” she says, still looking at his arm. “I didn’t know who you would be.”

“I could see that you were scared, but I can’t help wondering: why should you be?” Erik says. “You’re clearly immensely powerful.”

He looks at her. Self-conscious, she’s blushing. “I can’t really control it well,” she admits, still not having let go of his hand. “It’s… a lot to deal with. Things moving whether I want them to or not, hearing people’s thoughts, hearing… men’s thoughts.” She inhales a shuddering breath. Yes, Erik understands more clearly now. She’s a beautiful girl, statuesque already at eighteen, arresting with that flamelike hair. The things she must overhear….

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,” he tells her. There are those who abuse their soulmates, their logic apparently being that their soulmate has no right to escape. Erik is not one of those; while what he’d done to Charles was devastating, it was accidental. He no more wants to harm this girl than he’d wanted to harm Magda’s daughter, and he hopes she knows that.

Jean doesn’t live far from the city. At the coffee shop, to hear her tell it, her parents are well-meaning and good to her, but have never quite known what to do with her since her powers manifested; they aren’t mutants themselves. She seems to suspect they find handing her off to a soulmate a relief, but she thinks they’ll be reluctant once they know how much older Erik is. So he makes plans to meet them, to reassure them if he can. Barring incidents of serious crime committed against one’s soulmate, no one is permitted to keep soulmates apart, so she’ll be with him eventually, but it can’t hurt to be on good terms with her parents. 

He makes the trip to their home, sits down to a somewhat awkward dinner with the family, and then, seemingly having passed muster, helps to make arrangements for Jean to move in with him, in the city, where she can also attend college. It’s good to spend more time with her. 

They opt to not have a formal commitment ceremony, as the more traditional or conservative tend to do; they may have one eventually (the persistent tug of Erik’s Jewish heritage on his conscience makes him think he should at least consider it, although with Charles it had seemed superfluous to hold one), but not now, or anytime soon.

Moved in, she sleeps in his guest room, which Erik had made up for visitors up to and including his soulmate. He sleeps well with her nearby, with the mystery solved. His scar doesn’t hurt as much, either, he can’t help noticing; in the past, it occasionally would twinge, or feel a bit tender. 

He makes her breakfast, that day and the days after. She continues to sleep in the guest room. Occasionally, her dreams disrupt Erik’s sleep, but it’s nothing he hadn’t experienced with Charles, so it doesn’t frighten him, although the concern that it does bothers Jean. Eventually, he manages to reassure her that he’s used to that sort of thing and he doesn’t blame her.

Months into Jean being comfortable in the guest room, now thought of as Jean’s room, they’re comfortable enough with each other. Jean has her own bathroom, and the setup is such that they each have their own areas of the flat and don’t have to encounter each other if they don’t want to. As they’re both private people, it’s a nice arrangement. 

She’s in college, and Erik’s at work, when he’s not at the gym. They go out to eat; they go to the park, but there’s not any pressure to do so. Jean is witty, intelligent, thoughtful. She wishes she had better control of her powers; Erik attempts to help her practice. Charles had always been a natural at that sort of thing; Erik finds himself missing him for entirely new reasons.

Jean doesn’t come to his room, and he doesn’t go to hers; they don’t touch, although it’s not as though Erik hasn’t thought about it. He says nothing and hides the thoughts from Jean as best he’s able. Perhaps they’re just not going to be that to each other. If that’s what she wants, that’s fine.

In the middle of the night, after Jean has lived with him for months, he’s awakened by… something. Heat, is his first impression. With alarm, at first he thinks his flat is on fire. But there are emotions with the sense of heat: frustration, need, the feeling that one’s stifled and about to implode.

Then he realizes these impressions are in his mind, and that this is more specifically a dream, and even more specifically, Jean’s dream. 

Then her shape is in his doorway; she’s in a t-shirt that grazes the tops of her thighs. With a self-conscious swoop of her hand through her hair she’s walking into his bedroom, where she hasn’t been before. She stops beside the bed. 

Erik is very conscious of being in just shorts.

“I had a bad dream,” she whispers, voice thick with suppressed tears or rough with sleep or both. “Can I….”

Erik nods, and pulls back the covers. She gets in, a little clumsy, her back to him. After a moment, she shifts back, closer to him. He thinks of how touch-starved she must be, judging from the sense he got from the dream… and how touch-starved he is, and moves closer in turn. She pulls his arm over her in something that seems to take a lot of bravery, and then falls still. Though she isn’t moving, she’s vibrating with tension.

It’s difficult to fall asleep again in that situation, but he does, trying to keep his mind calm and folded in (again, drawing on practice with Charles, although he does have a certain amount of natural resistance to telepathy). He doesn’t want to give Jean any idea he might take advantage of her in this state. Because he won’t.

But he can’t help being hard when he wakes up, pressed against her as he is, with her so warm and lush. For a moment he thinks he’s with Magda; she’d loved morning sex, and part of him’s automatically primed and ready—mind and body. But Jean’s shampoo smells different and Erik realizes abruptly that this _is_ Jean, not Magda. He tries to move back, as he knows Jean’s realized he realizes, and he wishes he’d had some sort of caffeine; his mind and body don’t seem to be well aligned at this time of the morning. 

Jean turns under his arm, blinking at him in the low light. Erik opens his mouth to apologize, and is surprised when Jean kisses him. She’s so nervous and new at it that the kiss is not squarely on his mouth, but she corrects her course with a bit of help from him, although she’s tentative, experimental. 

Erik keeps himself tightly reined in, clamped down, hardly daring to breathe, his answering kisses as gentle as they can possibly be. He senses his patience is going to be tested, but at the same time, he’d never hurt Jean, so it’s not really a challenge in that sense.

He knows, from confessions Jean’s admitted to over time in bits and pieces (not from Erik asking but from her offering the information in the course of conversation) that Jean has had no intimate relationships. She’s always felt it was because her powers, having manifested at a young age and being so difficult to control, “freaked out” her contemporaries, but Erik suspects it was also her beauty being so intimidating... as well as her being turned off by the intrusive thoughts of men. Regardless, she’s kept everyone at arm’s length. Her being in Erik’s bed like this is huge, let alone touching him, let alone kissing him.

Her hand slides down Erik’s front to rest on his stomach, and his breath hitches; he recovers, still trading those little kisses, but he’s gradually realizing that if she doesn’t want to go any further he’ll have to ask her to go back to her own bedroom so he can take care of things.

“I want to stay,” she whispers. Carefully she reveals to him with her power that she finds him attractive, has since she saw him, but wanted to hide that, just in case it wasn’t welcome. In case it complicated things.

“What else do you want?” he whispers, wincing at how deep and raspy he sounds. She, however, apparently likes it.

“I want you to touch me,” she says, and Erik’s aware of how his fingers are tingling with the effort he’s been making of not touching her any more than he has been, a light hold at best. Before Erik can continue with his questioning, wanting to know what’s allowed and what’s not before he does anything, Jean sits up and pulls off her t-shirt, and he swallows hard, unable to avoid staring, speechless. He’s not lacking in experience, but that’s always a beautiful moment, and it’s the first she’s had; he’s fortunate to share it.

“Whatever you want,” she whispers, and he closes his eyes tightly for a moment. “I trust you.”

Someone as cautious and reserved as Jean, coming to his bed and trusting him… appropriate as it is for a soulmate, it’s still awe-inspiring. “I… I,” he starts, and then shakes his head to clear it. He thinks hard at her to send her images: her on her back under him, naked with her legs around him; then her riding him, head thrown back. She’s starting to breathe harder, reviewing the images. Mild stuff, as it goes, but new to her, and he wants them to both be sure. “Any of that? All. Of that?” He swallows again.

She nods. “I trust you,” she says again. “I’m….” He can almost feel the heat rise to her skin when she adds, sounding self-conscious, “I’m on birth control.”

“Ah,” Erik says. 

Cautious, with a featherlight touch, he traces his fingertips over her breasts, cups her in his palm, stroking the pads of his fingers over her softness. She inhales, arching her back a little, and he watches her nipple harden. He pinches it, hearing her whimper, and glances at her face, brows raised, questioning. More? She nods, and he draws her to lie down.

He bends his head to kiss his way down the slope of the other breast to take the other nipple in his mouth, gentle still as she whimpers, until a hunch driven by something in the whimpering makes him close his teeth lightly but firmly on it. When he feels her hands in his hair, he pauses, expecting he guessed incorrectly and he’s being stopped, but she’s pulling restlessly, wanting more.

Under her short t-shirt, she’s wearing panties. Kissing across her chest, he draws the backs of his knuckles down her solar plexus to her belly, pausing before slipping his fingers under her waistband, pausing again before drawing them down further. She gasps as his fingertips find their way through her soft curls to where she’s wet for him, and so hot; she parts her legs further immediately to accommodate him. This is a bit fast, yes—

“Please,” she gasps out, “more.”

Right. Erik gently pinches her clit and makes her moan and shiver just with that. She reaches down to grab his wrist and he pauses, confused, until he realizes she’s scrambling to get her panties off and give him more access. Ah. With her naked, he resumes his explorations. He’s the first person to do this to her, he thinks, as she squirms.

Then, with one of her legs up and back, knee bent, he slides his fingertips just inside her as he sucks gently at her nipples, and the little tremors burst into an actual wave and she comes, trembling all over and crying out, tightening around his fingers and sending out waves of pleasure without fully intending to. 

Like Charles when he lost control at such moments. The bittersweet thought makes him smile. 

She clumsily grasps his wrist and directs him in further, and he fucks her with his fingers like that, with care and steadily, until she comes again, sweating now, and so hot and wet he has to think of how she’ll feel around his cock. 

If she wants that.

“God, please, Erik,” she pants. “Please, I need more than your fingers.” Jean’s so private, so intense, that such a blunt admission makes his lust flare up, and it’s not even particularly explicit.

“It might hurt,” he tells her. He knows he’s on the large side. “Start off on top,” he manages, and raises his hips to take his shorts off. 

Flushed and sweaty, she straddles him, puts the head of his cock at her entrance, and slowly lowers herself down. She whimpers; it hurts. It takes seeming ages for her to adjust as she lowers herself. But he never wavers in his resolve; let her find her pace. Soon enough, she will. Let her find it. She feels so good, as it is, hot and slick and tight, and watching her is something to savor.

“I’m sorry,” she pants, trembling. “I’m taking so long.”

“Don’t ever apologize for something like this,” he tells her, hands going to her hips. “No one worth anything will rush you.”

She starts to move on him, slow and slight at first as she adjusts and starts to enjoy it, her hands resting on his chest. She’s not hiding from him how good it feels to be filled, as she rocks on him, slow, but Erik’s starting to need more, now that she’s getting used to it. 

“Can I turn us over?” he manages to ask.

She nods, and with some effort they move so that she’s on her back, him bridging himself over her. He slides in much more easily, and she inhales in a sharp gasp, tilting her hips up. Drawing his hands down her thighs, directing her legs, he says, “Around me,” and then as she complies he’s sinking in that much further, as she blinks. 

“Push up,” he says, gesturing, and she follows as he starts to set a pace. She clings to him, mouth slightly open, eyes wide. He doesn’t expect her to come that way, not without direct clit stimulation, but perhaps it’s the vigor of youth, because she does, quivering around him. Experience has given Erik tricks to keep himself lasting, and he keeps doing what he’s doing until she’s come a second and third time from this. She’ll most likely be getting sore soon, though, he thinks, and so he changes his angle and goes harder, chasing his own pleasure now, which isn’t difficult given where he is and who he’s with. The orgasm feels like it’s drawing from somewhere deep, deep inside, not just physically but mentally, and he’s shaking all over for a while. 

Of course, he doesn’t want to crush her, so he raises himself up on trembling arms and moves. They’re sweaty, and the room smells of sex. The sheets are damp, and Jean’s still breathing audibly; Erik assumes he must be as well. He thinks of what’s just happened; he, fifty-year-old Erik, has just taken the virginity of his eighteen-year-old soulmate. It seems an incredibly scuzzy thing to do, and maybe it is. Erik knows “She wanted it” isn’t enough of a reason for many with such a difference in age, even if they are soulmates. Still, he doesn’t regret it, and he very much doubts she does. 

“Are you all right?” Jean whispers, and Erik starts; surely he should be asking her that. 

He clears his throat. “Of course. Are you?” 

She has a hand over her crotch, as if she’s sore. She probably is. She smiles, wry. “Actually, yes.”

Erik huffs out a laugh. Magda had “complained” too.

“You just seem… quiet,” she continues. “I didn’t… do anything wrong, did I? I mean, I don’t know how it usually—” She’s rushing, embarrassed.

“No, no,” Erik says. “Not at all. You’re… perfect.” He picks up the arm on which she has her mark, and bends to kiss it, knowing that a kiss from one’s soulmate on one’s mark feels especially good. He knows that because Charles used to kiss him there all the time.

She stays there with him that night, waking him with kisses that start out shy and tentative and quickly become less so. 

More often than not, after that, she sleeps in his bed. Sometimes they both need time apart; sleeping together or not, their natures haven’t changed. 

Jean doesn’t love him, not per se, and he knows he doesn’t love Jean, not like he loved—loves—Charles. But he knows he can, and that he most likely will, someday. Probably soon. It’s not always the case that soulmates feel romantic love or sexual attraction for each other, but it often happens. More importantly for right now, he knows Jean needs him—his touch, his presence, his guidance. She may well, in turn, love him too, but the most immediate and important comfort of a soulmate is their presence. 

Over the course of a few months, it’s clear that while Erik and Jean enjoy honing her telekinesis—sometimes in the bedroom, in surprisingly creative ways—one thing he can’t really help her with beyond a certain level is her telepathy, and it’s of the greater concern to her. 

It’s time, Erik realizes, to contact Charles.

The letter he writes is not a long one, and he starts off acknowledging that Charles is well within his rights to refuse, or say nothing, and that Erik will understand. But he has to ask him for Jean’s sake; as her soulmate and fellow mutant, Erik has a responsibility to her. 

He’s surprised to receive an invitation to Charles’ mansion in Westchester, where he’d lived as a child and where he’d moved after he and Erik— where he’d moved when he was recuperating, and learning to deal with his paralysis. He’s running a school for mutants out of it now, something Erik thinks he should have known. The letter is polite in tone, although the signature says “Warmly, Charles.”

Erik is nervous when he and Jean travel out to the mansion, prepared for Charles to be cold and distant. But he’s distracted from his nervousness by the fact that Charles, he of the previously thick head of hair, is bald, sitting in his wheelchair smiling and looking assured, in a three-piece suit. He’s warm to Jean, almost shy with Erik, which is its own kind of pain. He longs to feel Charles’ mind in his own, but evidently Charles doesn’t feel the same need. The three of them go to his office, and discuss a curriculum of sorts for Jean. 

When she leaves to go to the restroom, Charles smiles at him, sadness in it, and holds out his wrist. “I’ve loved others over the years,” he says, looking at his mark, “but none like you. I’m glad you’re happy, Erik. You deserve it. Although she is rather young.” He winks. “I suppose she wears you out.”

Erik doesn’t laugh or make any jokes in return. He closes his eyes for a moment, and holds out his wrist, where plain as day is his faded scar, and Jean’s mark. He doesn’t look at Charles, but hears his intake of breath.

“You—”

“I wasn’t worthy of it, Charles.”

“Erik.” The pain in that simple word tears through him. 

“I hurt you, Charles. You said you didn’t want to see me again.”

Charles stares at him. “I said I didn’t want to see you. Then you were gone.” He sits back. “Are you saying you thought I never wanted to see you again at all, ever?”

“You— It certainly seemed that way.” Erik swallowed. Could it be he’d mistaken things entirely, caused himself and Charles years of pain, cut out his scar—for nothing?

“I was angry,” Charles sighs. “I forgave you. I waited for you. I often hoped you’d come back to me. I should have reached out… but I was afraid of what you might say.”

“You were better off without me,” Erik says. “You still are.” He’s always told himself that, but he’s not sure if he believes it, now. 

“I wouldn’t go that far. I did learn to live without you,” Charles says slowly, “out of necessity, but I still love you, you know.”

“I’ve loved you this entire time, Charles,” Erik says, and he’s just beginning to feel Charles’ thoughts seep into his own once more as Jean walks back in the room. Erik takes her hand as she sits, and she squeezes it, having got the gist of their conversation in a discreet sweep of her powers. 

“Jean,” Charles says, as Jean, looking worried, seems about to speak. “May I?” He withdraws from Erik’s mind, with a mental caress of apology, and a promise to return later. 

What follows is some sort of telepathic conversation between Charles and Jean, one to which Erik is not privy although he’s sure he’s the topic, one that brings tears to the eyes of both Jean and Charles as they exchange information, feelings, as they confer. As it ends and Charles turns to Erik, Jean squeezes his hand, and Charles reaches out to his mind with a warm tendril of affection.

“My life is here, now,” Charles tells him, “with the school, and I’m fine, I assure you. I would love it if you all stayed with me here, someday. But I want Jean to take care of you, and you of her. You need each other, and you need time on your own. I’ve given Jean lesson plans and I can communicate with her if she needs help in the future. With telekinesis, or with you.” He smiles, tears still shining in his eyes. “Lay down your burden, Erik. The past is the past.”

Erik sighs, a long exhalation. Charles’ eyes are blue and clear. Erik can still hear him saying “You did this” and “I don’t want to see you,” but those memories are fading away. His soulmark—the new one—gives a pulse. The scar twinges, but just slightly. 

They’re both with him; they’re both part of him.

A few years later, he and Jean do move to the mansion—to the school. They become instructors, the both of them. 

Erik finds his way to Charles’ bed, where things are different now, with his paralysis, but still good… so good. He can’t help being surprised that he’s welcome, and it takes him awhile to truly feel so. 

And he feels like he’s leaving Jean out, even though she knew his desires and fully approved. After he confesses feeling this way, Jean ends up in Charles’ bed, too, with Erik at first, and then just herself and Charles. There’s always been a slight spark between them that’s more than just the flare of interest between a mentor and mentee, and soon enough it’s stoked into a flame. Then there are more times when it’s just Jean and Charles—something both of them apparently need, and enjoy, from what Erik understands. Erik supposes there are some things only telepaths can know, can share. He’s glad he was a channel of providing that to them.

It seems Charles was the soulmate of Erik’s youth, Jean the soulmate of his maturity. As such, they’re both his mates and not formally each other’s, except in a sideways sort of way: one of the quirks of the soulmark. 

Erik has a habit of kissing and kissing and kissing Charles’ soulmark, as if apologizing to it for erasing its twin, and he has a habit too of pressing his existing soulmark against Jean’s, soaking in the feeling of skin on skin. The times when all three of them are in Charles’ bed, he’s almost drunk on it, overwhelmed with touch, with connection, with a bone-deep pleasure. The first time that had happened had been the most extraordinary event of his life, a spiritual experience in its way. 

But he and Charles still argue. Even if they’re healing, and as much as he’d love for Charles to agree with him on the important things, he doesn’t think he’d want a relationship with Charles that’s completely devoid of conflict. When he’s too irritated with Charles, or melancholy over him, he finds solace or something like it in Jean’s arms. 

With both of his soulmates with him, he feels almost whole again, and increasingly forgiven. But he never lets himself become complacent. He’s been given a second chance, and even a third, and with every glance at his wrist, every twinge of his scar and throb of his mark, he remembers how lucky he is.

**Author's Note:**

> Roz, I have a feeling you won't mind that this went where it did.... I couldn't stop them!


End file.
